The Walt Disney Company will extend its global reach by opening its first China store – the biggest shop it has ever opened – in 2015. Disney already runs a theme park in Hong Kong.

The shop will sell Disney merchandise: Buzz Lightyear talking action figures; Snow White dolls; Mickey Mouse ears, Cinderella costume collections for girls, that sort of thing. It will open in the Chinese city’s financial district in early 2015, before Shanghai Disney Resort opens at the end of that year or in early 2016.

“We are enormously proud to be building Disney’s largest store in the world in China,” Stanley Cheung, executive vice president and managing director of The Walt Disney Company’s Greater China unit, said in a statement.

“Disney has combined the retail concept with storytelling, fun and innovation and will provide families with a uniquely immersive entertainment destination featuring our best-loved stories and characters,” he said.

He said the flagship Disney Store would feature the largest and most diverse collection of Disney products by local and international designers.

The store will cover 5000 square metres in the Lujiazui site in Shanghai’s financial hub. It will feature a huge Disney Store retail space and a Disney-themed outdoor plaza.

The Disney Store concept was launched in 1987 and proved fabulously successful. It now has 340 locations worldwide.

Within the Shanghai store, families and children will be able to interact with their favourite characters and stories from across Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars, the group says.

China has been much in show business news recently, Hollywood Reporter points out – most recently last week, when American actor, director and producer Robert De Niro said he was investing in a Shanghai property complex.